Lessons
by Don'tEvenHaveAGun
Summary: The Joker teaches his daughter the hardest lesson of them all: life.
1. Chapter 1

Lessons

"_Cards."_

**I**

"_Oh, _my sweet child. Remember this lesson I'll teach you," said the Joker, rather plainly, rather abstractly to his only daughter. "You must never wander too far from home, too far from your mother or I – for the world is crooked; the gullies of cards will try to ensnare you, and take you far away from me."

The Ringmaster would grin maliciously, amused by the innocent vex that his daughter seemed to hold. The color of wine matched with a single hue, wide and curious to whatever her father had to offer.

Tiny, crimson dress shoes clicked together patiently. Hands balled against the sides of virginal white cloth. Red, curled hair drapes over a slender shoulder with the smallest tilt of her head; she's quizzical, but she can't tell if she should be frightened by a father's suggestion – or the actual reality of her world, a Wonderland that she was born into.

"Don't – trust the faceless," she inquires meekly, and her father nods proudly, cynically.

"If you ever leave me, my sweet child, they'll tell you lies about me, about your mother, and our home. Roleholders should not be trusted neither. They are unforgiving, they break the laws of Wonderland so freely; they'll force you to forget me. They'll choose and claim they love you, yet again lying."

His daughter's lips thinned, "You hold a role. Do you love me?"

The Jester keeps his grim smile, "Such a silly question, from such a silly little girl." Then he hums, mirthful with that bit of information. He inclined his frame to her height, bending over to run spiderlike fingers over a white lace bow, patting her head twice sweetly. "Of course, I love you. I will be the only man in your life that will ever truly love you."

"And you love mother, yes? You – guys fight a lot." With the matters of love brought to question, the ringmaster's daughter asks all; children are observant, cleverer than what an older generation claims.

"Mothers and fathers fight, my child. Doesn't mean that I love her any less. Listen well, I am not done," his hand moves, and he traces the hollow of her face, languidly thumbing over cheekbone. The young child leans into her father's warmth, almost drowsy to his false comfort and the warm placement of his hand. "If you are to wander, travel far away from me. And if you are encountered by faceless men, or roleholders that wish to persuade you. Then you must kill them. Not now," the man chuckles darkly, "You are far too small and sweet to pull such a morbid deed. But you'll be able to return to me, your mother, and your home, my sweet, sweet daughter."

His daughter would then smile, nodding her head slowly. "I'm the only man that will be able to protect you in this world of Wonderland, my dear. So stay as long as you like."

**A/N: **Alright, a darker turn from that one fic I was too lazy to go back to. So I guess this is a "rewrite" I have no idea; I'm only doing this because I have other papers to write. This dabble was based off a comic from Tumblr: Reapersun


	2. Chapter 2

Lessons

"_Birth."_

Percival, the eldest of the Ringmaster's children; a name that's inspired kings, a representation of knightly-hood with a bastardtized birth. She is the daughter of a foreigner and a madman, categorized as neither good nor evil. Rather, her innocence could be betrayed as blissful ignorance if she honestly believed she came from a _pure _birth, and from an honest man of a father.

Now, there's someone else born just like her. Tiny, infantile, and rather abstract to Wonderland's colorful world. New, ideally fresh, and rather innocent to the calamity of gunpowder and the smell of thick, iron blood. She was a big sister to a little brother that shared her fathers' characteristics of red hair, and her mother's eyes of ocean – much unlike her, being that she inherited her father's eye hue, along with his hair color.

"Corvo," her father from the bowels of the prison realm said, "that will be his name." And his counterpart nodded, jubilant in his approach; the Warden kept a stoic composer.

Corvo, a name of a leviathan; the interpretation of a crow within a dead language. Smart, inquisitive, cautious. Percival simply knew that this name would apply one day, somehow; but he is too young, much too vulnerable to take the world by storm.

Percival's mother, Alice Liddell, only nodded her head; contemplating a daze that she hasn't quite shook since she's entered the Circus grounds, long before Percival and Corvo were ever born; she's silent, her mind plagued in thought, mumbling that she can't remember her world anymore. There's whispers amongst the circus crowd - that the Ringmaster's wife has caught an illness called madness and never shook the dreariness; of course, their painted faces would turn and laugh at such a thought. The infamous foreigner from another world has fallen victim to the Joker's tricks. Finally and forever.

Alice lays upon her cot, draped in a sea of blankets, feverish with a cold sweat; she's bare, tired, and only sinks further into her sheets wishing to, metaphorically, drown. She seems almost apathetic as she holds her son against her chest; she tucks a hand underneath her son's head, giving him a type of stability. She doesn't even flinch when the Ringmaster approaches and cradles his hand underneath hers; the same one the supported his son's neck. Numbly, his thumb strokes the back of her white knuckle, then across the soft, fine hair of Corvo's soft skull.

"Percival," the Harlequin calls, gesturing his daughter to his side. Percival looks from her father from the prison, to the one that runs the circus; her head tilts only slightly, her sight obscured by her curly hair. "Come here. Don't you want to see your brother?"

Alice lips thin once Percival approaches, but fakes a smile nonetheless. Joker helps Alice to sit up some to present Corvo to Percival.

In complete awe, Percival instantly fell in love with her brother.

**A/N: I'm going to put it out there that the Joker from the prison and from the circus are the same entity. Technically making them both Percival and Corvo's father. (Described so in the games.) **

**I'm going to be vague about Alice's condition. You'll only have to read the story to understand the full story. **

**I'll make my corrections, and will update this once I have the chance. I'm no English major, after all. **


	3. Chapter 3

Lessons

"_Death."_

**III**

"Oh, papa," said the oldest of the Ringmaster's children. The child huffed, crouching down with her knees pressed against cold concrete; her fingers loomed, picking at tattered warden uniform fabric. Her father's blood ruined the material, the gun used against him destroyed the stitching. The aftermath left a young, little girl alone in the bowels of the Prison Realm, picking at the threads of her fallen father's uniform jacket while he slowly bled out.

"You promised me you weren't going to die again," Percival's lips thinned, her eyes burned; she held her composer, because her father coached her not to cry. To never cry. Certainly not over meaningless matters such as him dying. Or, anyone dying for that matter. "You promised -," she would repeat, clinging close to her father's stilled body, containing his fading body heat to keep him conscious a moment longer before he'd disappear right from under her fingertips.

She leaned in, arms folded over the warden's chest, her head pressed against the side of his shoulder; she listened to his bullet ridden lungs rattle with each struggling breath. A single, crimson eye narrowing down at her, intently watching, always judging.

There was hatred in her father's single eye. Not directed to her. More so to the world that surrounded him and a role he was bestowed to, bound to repeat the process over and over again. Like the Devil, he's trapped in a paneled history seeped in controversy, and gnawing madness that has already devoured his once sane mind.

He's too weak to push his daughter off his body. And Percival makes it clear that she had no intention of leaving anytime soon. Or, to whenever he passes and comes back as the madden Warden of Wonderland.

"Papa -," Percival whispers against the fabric of his shoulder, voice muffled and tired. "Please promise me again you won't die. Please." She has witnessed the malicious murder of her father multiple times – be it from prison inmates that finally snapped, or role holders that were simply not in the mood; even one death is too much for a young child to bear.

Percival's vision is obscured by her curly, red hair; her eyes finally squeezed painfully together when she never received a reply from the dying man. She cried, fingers curling against his uniform jacket; the blood of the man almost made her want to recoil in horror, the ordeal has soiled yet another one of her better dresses from the excess of blood. But she doesn't care. Percival was far too gone to decipher what was normal and what was not anymore.

"And just why do you make me run on false promises?" Painfully, the warden chuckles out. His malicious nature getting the better of him; he treated everything as a joke, because, simply, that is how life was interpreted to him.

"Just, please, Papa. Promise me," Percival coiled, feeling ultimate dread by listening to the broken laughter of her father; his mouth is caked in a fine ring of blood, his lungs were beginning to flood internally; he sputtered with every gracious intake.

"Then I promise."

Though, that was honestly the sweetest lie the man had to offer; he is, indeed, the joker of lies; taking pride with coming along with a silver-tongue.

Percival will never become that normal child her mother cried over.


	4. Chapter 4

Lessons

"_Mother."_

**Part one.**

She's walks through the insanity of this beautiful world that surrounds her and falls madly in love with it; it is all foreign to her, and every step she takes seems to be a new beginning, or a different backdrop she's never dreamed – nor imaged to ever see in her waking lifetime. She's enthralled by the vivid color splash, the idle conversation with the mad, and the longing aroma of burning jasmine incenses that tend to suffocate her and drown out her chattering mind.

Alice, caught between the parallels of delusion, dreams, and utter chaos, seems rather content – or lost. She understands that this world, this land of Wonderland, an island in her bewildering cosmos, conspires to confuse her and even terrify her. She understands that her morals would never line up to a world that smells of freshly struck gunpowder, churned earth, iron blood, and rose garden. She could never fully grasp that a life could be expendable, or even be made out to be an artistic joke.

In her short existence, her newfound naïve wisdom, never in her wildest dreams would she imagine constructing a land to suit her lonely existence as a middle child. A world that raveled her in attention, noticing her first before – others noticed her older sister. Behind those rose-colored thoughts, Alice almost, secretly, enjoyed the appeal of the attention of others; she enjoyed the power of controlling one's love, and damning the next. It was a sadistic notion, and she grew power hungry in swaying emotion during the calamity of war and the parade of gunfire; where she believed she held no womanly charm, others begged to differ.

With great attention, it deprives the unhealthily obsessed. And Joker, the Warden of Wonderland, the Whimsical Ringmaster that haunts the circus grounds, the _Devil himself, _took quite a fancy to the foreigner with the bitter persona and the mumbling, fleeting mind. He found her porcelain frown endearing, the recoiling fear that marred her blue gaze admirable, her startled tone – desirable.

To the Ringmaster's advances, Alice was defiant. Uninterested to the man's ideals of love, and the horrors he purposely inflicted. Though, as irony was a second prospect to the lands of Wonderland, he hunted her. Unremorseful, he dragged her into his web with cradled song and the illusion of bittersweet peace. She would fight it at first, of course. And as Alice didn't want to believe it, she finally forgot the reasons behind her descent into Wonderland and the madness that followed.

Maybe in this sick custom, wondering the amble halls of gutted jail cells, she truly forgot the girl she was in her previous life. She felt like a vessel, bequeathed to a certain folly that should have belonged to someone else. Whatever the Joker whispered to her at night, in voidless song, he pressured her to forget everyone and everything, told her that the family she once had had nothing to do with her current existence. Slowly, her brain mellowed at the simple suggestion, and she truly wanted to forget. She almost felt safe in the very bowels of the Prison Realm, the gnawing silence that screamed in her face; she heard no guns ring, nor the chatter of whispers that spoke of her transgressions; just the constant clicks of the Warden's steps drawing near and fingers looming around rusted bars.

Over time, he drags her deeper into his world. And with a gentle touch, he lays her underneath him. And as she looks up at gray ceilings, she feels rather melancholy. She feels touch, but never acknowledges the sensation; even while he invades her, and she feels the side of his hollow face brush against the elegant curve of her neck. Mindlessly, her arms would decorate his shoulders, buried underneath his performer build. Sometimes, without even questioning nor thinking for a reason _why, _her vision is obscured to the numb burn of tears, letting her fingernails dig into the flesh of his shoulder. This would usually reward her with a forced, and hurried kiss; the pressure of the weight he gave would press the back of her skull against solid surface.

He would never hurt her, Alice figured during one of their more intimate sessions. But, Alice has been wrong before. Or, perhaps, in his own dark way – he loved her.

Months would go by, and the ideals of pleasure resulted in a new life, a rather unnatural one – or two. Both times, during the births of her children, Alice didn't smile. Joker, on the other hand, was ecstatic, he finally knew that he won the foreigner over before anyone in cursed Wonderland ever could. He would kiss her, smiling against a thin line that would sometimes offer back the same affection, then he would press his forehead against hers, telling her that she did a wonderful job – and that she deserved the world and then some.

It seemed, he was always around her; he would always drag her around the circus, or down the narrow hallways of prison. After time, she stopped trying to decipher between the personas of Joker, and merely believed the same entity. With even more time, she slowly accepted his twisted pledge of romanticism.

She did in fact love him in the worst of ways: it fed her lonely soul.

**-x-**

Percival has always been so curious in how her parents met, and how their conflicting personalities seemed to work. Truthfully, Percival would understand that her father's devotion to her mother was merely a game; a silly, playful game.

She would watch her father's interactions, bowing to her mother, tapping his jester hat playfully against his chest, and he would smile that hollow-point smile that was all but different than his normal, permanent one; her mother was small in comparison to her father, and she would merely nod her head in acceptance to his ridicules greeting.

Percival's lulled, crimson eyes widened, watching the rare sight of a small smile curve against her mother's lips; her mother murmured something faintly to her father, and he would react by grabbing both of her hands and cradling them; he would then laugh, bending his frame to reach her mother's height and kiss her.

Her mother and father are so very different, indeed. Though, from what Percival heard by listening to idle conversation of passing performers, stating, "That the wife of the Ringmaster was a lot different before she fell down that rabbit hole, even more like the crowd when she wondered the lands of Wonderland."

For a moment, Percival silently questioned herself: Just who holds the power? Her father that haunts her mother with illusions of happiness and unwillingness to let go. Or, her mother, that feeds off unknowingly to the illusions, but leads the jester on with her fleeting grins.

Children were more observant than what people liked to believe.

_A/N: Still keeping vague about Alice. _


	5. Chapter 5

Lessons

"_Realism." _

Percival tried her best, but ultimately found her folly and crumbled into a state of uncontrollable demise and embarrassment. The pain started from her breast, and burned on rather painfully at that very moment; her face dropped, her sunny disposition decimated by a few harsh words by a few harsh older children. Her sight is obscured by the burn of bitter tears, rubbed raw when she tried to hold her composer by wiping the side of her balled fist against the corner of her eyes. Rather than being the jester's daughter, she recoiled to a weak state of self-loathing.

She didn't want to cry in front of her father. Not while her father held her still by her slender shoulders, leaning on both of his knees just so he could catch equal ground with her eye height. She clung to her father's warden uniform desperately, fingers curling against raven fabric. She leaned forward, wanting to be lifted from the ground and held like she was when she was younger by her father. She buried her embarrassed complexion against the crook of his neck, her vision obstructed by her crownless curl of red, and her father's uniform jacket that almost suffocated her.

"It can be a real pain when you cry, ya know," the Warden muttered, his tired voice ruffling against her sea of hair. "'Cause, really, I don't see the reasoning behind it. Not my expertise, kid. More so your mom's department." Still, he kept his daughter secure to his chest – even if it was an awkward response. He certainly didn't know how to resolve the child's problem in the first place, she refused to utter what bothered her. And even if she could, he wouldn't be able to understand her through the incoherent slurred speech of her sobbing.

"Eh?! Kid, I told you no crying. Quit cryin', just tell me why you're crying so papa can kill or mutilate whoever, then I can move on with my job." The warden hummed with agitation, pulling his daughter slightly way to look down at her, capturing the painting of exasperation on her face. His single eye narrowed down, still Percival tried to grab for his shoulders again to pull herself closer; he kept the child grounded, and studied her.

"I can't," she breathes, and the stutter hurts the worst; she feels her chest swell with air and leave her all at once; Percival finds it the hardest task to stare back into her father's single gaze, the same hue as hers.

"Damn lie. C'mon, you know I don't baby ya. Look at me," his voice softened, but he demanded authority as her father; he tapped underneath her chin faintly, leaving her to finally glance up. "You know damn well I didn't raise you to be weak. You're strong. And you're going to be stronger than all those sons of bitches that run Wonderland. You're a girl, Percival. Life is going to be purposely hard on you with all of them out there. But you know what? Fuck the stereotypes. And fuck all that dare opposes you. You're going to fight your way through this all. Why? Because you don't give up, nor are you quick to cry. Now, stop blubbering."

It took Percival a moment to gather her composer and to slowly nod. Her father finally sighed and hung his head for a moment; she worked around the phrasing of his colorful vocabulary, silently deciphering what he actually meant in the first place. She cried because, well, she felt weak.

It all started with her inquisitive nature, and the group of gathering children outside the main big-top tent. Childish as it was, she approached them rather politely and questioned their business in a restricted area of the circus. First, one answered her dully, telling her that a stray cat found a home underneath one of the portable animal carts and they wanted to follow it. Next, they all grew silent when they finally studied her, and quickly dubbed her a menace. Muttering, "Her eyes! She's the warden's daughter! Run, run!"

Children could be rather cruel to the idea of difference. Sure, she owns eyes and a steady heart rate. Sure, her father is not known to be kind, nor her mother completely sane. But the ideal that heritage follows you, and places you in the same boat as your parents seemed – baffling.

Still, Percival is so young and she has much to learn before she finally understands the true meaning why people clearly fear her for being the warden/ringmaster's daughter. But her father's words rung true, and it only caused her to straighten her posture, and respect her father in a new light. She forces herself to dry up, and muffles a lowly apology to her father who still seemed out of it more than usual.

"Wha-why are you saying sorry," he chuckled finally, his hollow-point grin finally emerging, but was not as terrible. "Damn. Look here, kid, first step to being strong is to refuse to say sorry. Look at me! It's clearly working out great."

"Still, I'm sorry," Persival repeats.

Defeated, Joker sighs, rustling the curls of his daughter's head. "Still aren't going to tell me what's bothering, eh, kid? Whatever," her father leaned forward and pressed his lips to her forehead, "I'll teach ya to hurt people one day, kid. And you'll make all the revenge you want. And I'd be damned that you're ever accused of being _weak_."


End file.
